A deposit apparatus for receiving bank notes may be included in an automated teller machine (ATM). It is known for an ATM of this type to dispense bank notes that have earlier been deposited at the ATM, such ATMs being known as recycling ATMs.
Known self-service deposit terminals for receiving loose bank notes (in contrast with notes contained in envelopes) subject the notes to a validation procedure. One or more of the deposited notes may be rejected on the grounds that they are damaged, dirty or forged, and the rejected notes are either captured by the ATM for further manual verification or returned to the user according to the regulations of different countries.
When bank notes are deposited in an automatic recognition and validation system, such as the GBNA or GBRU, the notes have to be categorized, if recognized, as: a) genuine; b) counterfeit; or c) suspect, if that system is to comply with the requirements of certain countries (e.g. Germany). Genuine and counterfeit categories are decisive and the result attributable to the person depositing the notes at that time. However, the suspect category requires subsequent, usually manual, re-assessment. If all notes considered suspect fall into the genuine category or they all are found to be counterfeit, then attributing the notes to the person depositing them is straight forward. If however, a number of notes of the same denomination are deposited by different people are subsequently found to be of different categories (some genuine, some counterfeit) then the process of connecting each note with a particular person is more complex. At present, images of the suspect notes are captured and where possible the serial number area is imaged in an attempt to subsequently connect each suspect with a particular transaction and therefore with a particular person so that the face value of counterfeit notes are not credited to the depositor and/or such that criminal investigation can take place. Due to the nature of banknotes (soiling, tears, folds and design (not all notes have serial numbers on both sides), differentiation between one suspect and another is not always possible. This is compounded as each note, even if re-entered to the deposit machine to try to repeat the process, will undoubtedly generate a different image even if transported in the correct orientation. Due to the limit of allocated memory size, the total amount of images can be stored is restricted, which increases the chance of ATM being out of service.